


A Time To Mourn

by Mandergee



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: F/M, Gen, Phil Coulson's Cellist, Pre-Coulson Resurrection, So much angst, Temporary Character Death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-04
Updated: 2014-07-04
Packaged: 2018-02-07 09:47:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 604
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1894464
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mandergee/pseuds/Mandergee
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>One-shot. She'd started to tell him, once, how hard it was for her when he'd died. She didn't tell him about the day of his funeral.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Time To Mourn

They'd started to pour the soil down, the shower of gravel landing in muffled thumps on the smokey grey casket, and she winced each time she heard the distinct sound of a heavy rock hitting the surface. He'd be buried soon, beneath six feet of earth and vibrant green grass that would wave gently in the breeze. The tree would shade him, the plot would hide him, and the world would slowly but surely forget him.

She didn't like it.

Her eyes moved to the headstone, the simple letters catching the sunlight, the minerals in the stone glittering like diamonds. He'd have approved of it, she didn't doubt that, the basic style reminding her of the dull suits he'd always liked to wear. ' _Ties don't really go well with fieldwork'_ , she'd told him once, when they'd crouched behind an enemy vehicle and traded bullets with a terrorist cell. He'd just smiled, and poked his finger through a bullet hole that had fortunately pierced the fluttering edge of his jacket and entirely missed his left kidney.

 _'But they really pull the outfit together'_ , he'd answered, and when he'd been looking away she'd managed a smile.

She'd heard that someone had chosen to bury him in the one suit she hadn't liked, the blue one with the silver pinstripes that she'd always teased made him look like a wannabe gangster. A fedora and violin case might have completed the outfit, but the maroon tie he'd worn one day _had_ pulled it all together, and she'd seen him briefly in the hallways of S.H.I.E.L.D HQ with the jacket unbuttoned and the tie askew. May wondered if it had been something Audrey had bought for him, that tie that he suddenly wore with every suit from then on, it tying each one together in a way she hadn't noticed before. He'd been happier since his last trip to Portland, and when she'd filed his leave paperwork after seeing him that day, she'd imagined she knew why.

Love suited Phil Coulson better than that suit ever had. She wished she'd had more time to see that.

“Ma'am.” She startled, realized she'd been standing closer to the now partially filled burial plot, toes of her black Manolo pumps just touching the edge. Coulson's name stared at her from the end of the perfectly dug rectangle and she blinked, wondered why it had suddenly become harder to read. “Ma'am, you're going to have to step back now. We're about to finish up here.”

“I'm sorry.” She _was_ , she realized. Sorry to be standing there on a beautiful summer day, in a black dress with her hair pulled back, wondering how this had all happened. Sorry that she hadn't been on that helicarrier in New York, hadn't been there to tell Phil Coulson he should stay back and let the ones who were _trained_ to do that sort of thing take on Loki by themselves. No manner of alien tech was going to save a man whose job _was supposed to be the planning, not the execution_ . Her voice cracked as she spoke again, and she felt her throat tighten with the grief. “Dammit, Phil. Why couldn't you just let someone else take him on? Why did _you_ have to?”

There was no one to answer her question, and as she watched the cemetery crew finishing up from her new vantage point, she realized there was never going to be. He was gone, and she was going to move on without him.

She didn't know how she could, but only that eventually she would.

He'd want that.

**Author's Note:**

> After all of the times May has shown emotion on Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D when referring to Coulson's death...I had to write something about it. I HAD TO.


End file.
